NASA'S "HIDDEN FIGURES" HONORED IN CONGRESSIONAL GOLD MEDAL CEREMONY. (PHOTOS).

 NASA's "Hidden Figures" honored in Congressional Gold Medal ceremony

Black Women Mathematicians Receive Congressional Medals for Space Program Work

 A group of Black women central to NASA's success during the space race and known as the "Hidden Figures” were honored Wednesday in a Congressional Gold Medal ceremony on Capitol Hill. 

"This has been a long time coming," House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, said at the ceremony. "At a time in America when our nation was divided by color and often by gender, these women dared to step into the fields where they had previously been unwelcome." 

The "Hidden Figures" were considered crucial to NASA's work from 1930-1970. They were mathematicians and engineers who played a role in the earliest American space flights — calculating rocket trajectories and earth orbits and helping to put men on the moon.

Three of the women — Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson — were honored posthumously. The fourth woman, Christine Darden was honored for her work as an aeronautical engineer. 

Johnson credited the women for laying "the very foundation upon which our rockets launched and our astronauts flew and our nation soared." 

"Although we call them 'Hidden Figures,' we shouldn't think of them merely as supporting characters in the American story of space, explanation, exploration," Johnson said. "They were the engineers and mathematicians who actually wrote the story itself." 

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat, called their contributions "innumerable" and said "they proved an unassailable fact — our diversity is a strength." 

Families of the four women were presented with the medals. Another medal was symbolically presented to all those whose contributions to NASA went unrecognized during the period. 

NASA administrator Bill Nelson said their accomplishments "are all the more impressive" given the challenges they faced because of racism and sexism. 

"Awarding them the Congressional Gold Medal honors their lives and work and ensures that they will continue to inspire Americans for years to come," Nelson said. "When the first woman lands on the moon in the Artemis program, she will follow a trail blazed by the women we honor today." 

Also making remarks praising the women were Margot Lee Shetterly, who authored a book about the Black women mathematicians and their role in the space race that was adapted into an Oscar-nominated film in 2016, Sen. Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican from West Virginia, and Rep. Frank Lucas, an Oklahoma Republican. 

The early space program employed hundreds of women to work as mathematicians at what is now NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia. But, the Black mathematicians were not permitted to work with the white mathematicians because of racial separation policies at the time. The Black researchers’ work went unrecognized for years.

The team used pencils, slide rulers and mechanical calculating machines to calculate the paths of rockets and orbiters in the atmosphere and in space. The path is called the trajectory.

“Our office computed all the trajectories,” Katherine Johnson told The Virginian-Pilot newspaper in 2012. “You tell me when and where you want it to come down, and I will tell you where and when and how to launch it,” she explained.

In 1961, Johnson did trajectory research for the Freedom 7 Mission, the first to carry an American into space. The next year, she checked the calculations made by a new NASA computer for astronaut John Glenn’s planned orbits around the planet.

John Glenn did not trust the new computer. Days before the launch, he told NASA, “Get the girl to check the numbers.” John Glenn become the first American to orbit the Earth in 1962.

Johnson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015 – the nation's highest civilian honor. Her work at NASA helped open doors for many other women to take part in the space program.

Dorothy Vaughan rose to become NASA's first Black female supervisor. Mary Jackson was NASA's first Black female engineer. And Christine Darden is best known for her sonic boom research.

More photos below.